Posted
by
timothyon Thursday March 08, 2012 @10:04AM
from the how-do-you-really-feel? dept.

langelgjm writes "After repeated dismissals by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, Congressman Darrell Issa has taken matters into his own hands by posting a copy of ACTA online and asking for public comments. ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, is a secretly negotiated multilateral trade treaty with the potential for profoundly affecting the Internet. 'ACTA represents as great a threat to an open Internet as [do] SOPA and PIPA and was drafted with even less transparency and input from digital citizens,' Issa said."

Please, dear god, read some of it and post an intelligent comment. If you put in a generic rant, you merely become a statistic. However, if ou present a relevant comment, they are required to annotate it.

Because those two certainly won't uphold corporate interests? If you hold your nose and vote for either of them, it won't be taken as a sign that the American people oppose ACTA. It will be taken as a sign that people want more government intrusion in their bedrooms and more rights for corporations. If you want to give more power to the women-are-sluts-and-corporations-are-heroic-people party, don't come crying when the obvious results.

There are two things about that story that are quite interesting. The first is that the "story" Fluke wanted to tell was a personal anecdote (hardly fit material for a discussion, unless you are attempting an emotional appeal... which again, is not exactly what we want our laws to be based one). Second, they put the fact that she was a minority in the headline (as if that was the issue) when clearly at least one of the witnesses was already black (so, not the actual issue). And finally, since when was a student at a university considered an expert witness on anything like this? Seriously. A professor, sure. A random person they happened to find in a university with a (no doubt) heart wrenching story? I'm sorry, but she doesn't actually have any standing to testify. I can demonstrate that with an easy (ridiculous) example: have a white person testify that black people beat him up, at a hearing to pass a law to throw all black people in jail. Does that testimony offer any credible reason to pass the law? No, and neither does Fluke's.

Also, the best part was this quote:

She criticized the Republican committee chairman, Rep. Darrel Issa, for wanting to “roll back the fundamental rights of women to a time when the government thought what happens in the bedroom is their business.”

Actually, Issa wants the government to not be involved in the bedroom: i.e. not to have the government fund their contraceptives, or, rather, to force religious organizations to provide them (which contradicts religious principles).

So a republican wishing to jab Obama does the right thing by posting a secret treaty online. And he's a California republican as well - land of the Entertainment Industry. Does this count as a good thing or a bad thing? I'm thinking it's both but it works out for the citizens so it's a net good despite potential partisan motivations.

Your smugness smells like the shitpile it appears. If you knew anything about Darrell Issa you would understand that Hollywood did not elect him. Hollywood is funneling money to Obama. You should pull your head out of your ass sometime and at least try to research your own bias.

No, the issue at question here is whether it is right and legal to force religious organizations to act against their conscience, i.e. to provide health insurance that must includes contraceptives. This isn't government policy on contraceptives: it is government policy setting organizational policy on birth control. As the good Rabbi says in the linked article,

“We are not here because we seek to hurt preventative care of anybody. We are here today because the administration is showing insensitivity to the liberty of conscience.”

You wouldn't be in favor of the government forcing vegan restaurant to server meat, would you? This is very similar, except even more so: this is more like the government forcing the vegans to slaughter the animals on-site, then serve the meat. Flukes argument (in this analogy) is that her friend didn't get enough protein because the vegan restaurant doesn't serve meat. But I suppose it's OK to force people to act against their conscience, because it's for the common good. Right?

I feel like you might be missing the larger issue here. If we're going to require employers to provide health insurance to their employees, it probably isn't a good idea to allow them to refuse to cover some treatment to which they have a "religious objection", because the end result of that is "an employee doesn't get any medical care that the employer does not like". Contraception is the easiest one for the Republicans to attack so it came up first, but it's by far not the only one. Jehovah's Witnesses are morally opposed to blood transfusion, ultra-Orthodox Jews are opposed to organ transplants, and Christian Scientists are opposed to just about every medical procedure. Should I be denied a blood transfusion (or required to pay the disastrously high out of pocket cost, which is almost as bad) just because my boss doesn't like them? This is a bad precedent to set.

Like it or not, you are paying for the sex lives of others. The poor have sex, and they go to hospitals to give birth. When they can't pay, who do you think pays? You do.

The only question is, are you going to pay for a very expensive birth, and the social problems that come from people with few resourses having large families? Or are you going to pay for the birth control that will save you a lot of money in the long run?

No, the issue at question here is whether it is right and legal to force religious organizations to act against their conscience, i.e. to provide health insurance that must includes contraceptives

Of course it is. I have to pay for all sorts of things that violate my conscience. As a matter of fact, the great majority of my tax dollars are spent on things that are absolutely repugnant to my conscience.

Also, remember what the first amendment says. It doesn't say "religious liberty shall be unrestricted". It says "shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion". Laws that give, e.g., the Catholic church special treatment are laws that respect an establishment of religion.

Besides, if you really care about religious liberty, what of that of the employees? It's not the personal religious liberty of the Catholics that's at stake, but their ability to force their religion on their employees. As an athiest employed by a Jesuit research institution, I find this every bit as repugnant to my conscience as they must find contraception.

You wouldn't be in favor of the government forcing vegan restaurant to server meat, would you?

If serving meat had as great of an effect on public health as providing universal birth control, then absolutely.

But I suppose it's OK to force people to act against their conscience, because it's for the common good. Right?

That's the problem! It's for the public good. Why is it that conservatives only object to coercion when the coercion is for the public good? They have no problem forcing people to violate their conscience and pay for harmful wars, or the persecution of Cannabis smokers, etc. But when it comes to a policy that is universally recognized as good for public health, only then do they whine about conscience.